American Culture
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50 free American Culture trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Moving to the United States, or just curious about it? A lot of American life runs on unwritten rules and shared references: what to do when the restaurant bill arrives, why the price at the register is not the price on the shelf, which holidays close the banks and which ones are mostly an excuse to eat. This quiz covers the culture a newcomer actually meets. There are questions on national holidays and the traditions that go with them, classic foods and where they came from, the sports Americans follow and the rituals around them, how high school and college are organized, and the everyday systems for money, dates, temperature and emergencies. A final stretch looks at music, film, art and the ideas Americans use to describe themselves. It is written for international students, ESL classes and anyone preparing for life or study in the US, and it works just as well as a refresher for people who grew up there. The early questions are friendly, and every answer comes with a short explanation, so you learn the story behind the custom as well as the fact.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What do Americans carve into jack-o'-lanterns at Halloween, in place of the turnips used in Ireland?
Pumpkins
Pumpkins, a crop native to North America, took over when immigrants brought the Irish and British custom of carving root vegetables to the United States.
Q 02Which treat served in America's Chinese restaurants was probably invented by Japanese immigrants?
Fortune cookie
Fortune cookies are not Chinese in origin: they most likely grew out of cookies baked by Japanese immigrants, and California bakers popularized them in the early 1900s.
Q 03Which dessert, first recorded in medieval England, features in a saying about all things American?
Apple pie
Apple pie reached America with English, Dutch and Swedish colonists, who had to bring the trees as well: the only native apples were small, sour crabapples.
Q 04In which order do Americans usually write the parts of a date, unlike nearly all other countries?
Month, day, year
Month, day, year is the traditional American order, so 5/6 means May 6, where a British reader would see the fifth of June.
Q 05Which championship game is played on America's second-biggest eating day, behind only Thanksgiving?
Super Bowl
Super Bowl Sunday is the second-largest food consumption event in the US, and the game frequently draws the largest TV audience of the American year.
Q 06Which color are American school buses painted, a shade agreed at a 1939 safety conference?
Yellow
Yellow was chosen because lettering printed on it is the most legible in semi-darkness, and the official shade is now called National School Bus Glossy Yellow.
Q 07Which animal is said to predict six more weeks of winter each February 2 if it sees its shadow?
Groundhog
Groundhog Day grew from a Pennsylvania Dutch superstition, and the older German tradition behind it watched a badger instead.
Q 08What do Americans call the sport most of the world knows as football, using old British slang?
Soccer
Soccer is a British coinage: it began as 1880s school and university slang shortened from association football, the sport's formal name.
Q 09What are diners in American restaurants expected to leave for the server, usually 15 to 20 percent?
A tip
A tip is now expected at any sit-down meal, yet six American states once passed laws that made tipping illegal.
Q 10Which work trousers made for miners did Marlon Brando and James Dean turn into 1950s teen fashion?
Blue jeans
Blue jeans owe their strength to copper rivets at the pocket seams, patented in 1873 by tailor Jacob Davis and his cloth supplier Levi Strauss.
Q 11Which bird does the US president ceremonially pardon each year before Thanksgiving dinner?
Turkey
Turkey is so central to the meal that the holiday is nicknamed Turkey Day, and George H. W. Bush made the White House pardon a permanent ritual in 1989.
Q 12Which national holiday do Americans celebrate every July 4 with fireworks, parades and barbecues?
Independence Day
Independence Day honors the Declaration adopted on July 4, 1776, although Congress had actually voted for the break with Britain two days earlier.
Q 13Which shopping day's name did Philadelphia police apply to the traffic jams after Thanksgiving?
Black Friday
Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, traditionally opens the Christmas shopping season and is the busiest shopping day of the American year.
Q 21Which food do contestants race to eat at the Nathan's Famous contest on Coney Island every July 4?
Hot dogs
Hot dogs must be eaten bun and all within ten minutes, and a promoter admitted in 2010 that the contest's fabled 1916 origin was invented for publicity.
Q 22Which spread is paired with jelly in the classic sandwich of American school lunches?
Peanut butter
Peanut butter and jelly first met in print in 1901 as a dainty tea sandwich; by 1913 the pairing was being recommended for children's school lunches.
Q 23Which campfire treat sandwiches a toasted marshmallow and chocolate between two graham crackers?
S'more
S'more is a contraction of 'some more', and a recipe under that longer name appeared in a Girl Scouts cookbook in 1927.
Q 14At which New York City crossroads does a glowing ball descend at midnight on New Year's Eve?
Times Square
Times Square has hosted the ball drop since New Year's Eve 1907, pausing only in 1942 and 1943 because of wartime blackouts.
Q 15Which civil rights leader is honored with a US federal holiday on the third Monday of January?
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. gained the honor when Ronald Reagan signed the holiday into law in 1983, and it was first observed three years later.
Q 16Which holiday on the first Monday of September honors American workers and unofficially ends summer?
Labor Day
Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894, while more than 150 other countries honor their workers on May 1 instead.
Q 17Which holiday, made federal in 2021, marks the 1865 order that enforced emancipation in Texas?
Juneteenth
Juneteenth blends the words June and nineteenth: on that date General Gordon Granger's order reached Texas, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect.
Q 18Which Great Lakes city dyes its river bright green to celebrate St. Patrick's Day?
Chicago
Chicago's tradition arose by accident in 1961, when plumbers were using a dye to trace illegal pollution flowing into the river.
Q 19Which celebration brings bead-throwing parade floats to the streets of Louisiana before Lent begins?
Mardi Gras
Mardi Gras was first celebrated in North America near present-day Mobile, Alabama, in 1703, well before the famous Louisiana parades began.
Q 20Which department store's name is on New York City's Thanksgiving parade of giant character balloons?
Macy's
Macy's first parade, in 1924, used live animals borrowed from the Central Park Zoo; a Felix the Cat balloon replaced them three years later.
Q 24Which New York State city gave its name to the spicy chicken wings made famous by the Anchor Bar?
Buffalo
Buffalo wings, in the best-known account, were first fried up in 1964 by Teressa Bellissimo as a quick late-night snack for her son's friends.
Q 25In which Georgia city did John Pemberton invent Coca-Cola, first sold as a patent medicine?
Atlanta
Atlanta's new tonic changed hands in 1888, when Pemberton sold his rights to Asa Candler, whose marketing made Coca-Cola the dominant soft drink worldwide.
Q 26Which sport, long called America's national pastime, pauses for a seventh-inning stretch?
Baseball
Baseball was already being called the national pastime by New York journals in 1856, after a craze for the game swept the city.
Q 27Which sport did James Naismith invent in 1891 to keep a gym class busy on a rainy day?
Basketball
Basketball takes its name from the peach basket Naismith nailed up as a goal; its bottom was left intact, so the ball had to be fetched out after every score.
Q 28What do American sports fans call the parking-lot party held around their cars before a big game?
A tailgate
A tailgate party is named for the fold-down rear door of a truck or wagon, which fans turn into a table for barbecued food and drinks.
Q 29Which nickname is given to the spring NCAA tournament that Americans try to predict with brackets?
March Madness
March Madness has turned prediction into a national ritual of its own: a 2023 estimate put the brackets filled out each year at 60 to 100 million.
Q 30Which sideline activity began in 1898 when student Johnny Campbell directed a crowd's chants?
Cheerleading
Cheerleading began as an all-male activity, and women were not permitted to join in at the University of Minnesota until 1923.